In Jeffrey Kipnis’ essay, “Who’s Afraid of Gift-Wrapped
Kazoos?” he warns of the dangers of curating an exhibition in order to educate
the audience. Once the exhibition verges into the didactic, it tells viewers
what to think, rather than provoking questions and opening up a space for
viewers to respond (think/see/feel) from their own particular perspective.
Kipnis describes curating as a cultural practice that should “affect us, change
us, stimulate us to think and see and hear and feel differently,” not one that
should educate. “Once something teaches you something,” he says, “it thinks for
you.” Instead, the exhibition should prod the viewer think for him/herself.
Although Kipnis is describing the process of selecting existing
works (in particular architecture) and displaying them in a gallery or museum,
I am interested in how this cultural practice of curating is adopted and
deployed by the artist to create a new work in the form of an exhibition. The
same rule applies: the exhibition should elicit a personal response from the
viewer, rather than delivering an educational message. Many artists have
borrowed the tools of the curator to create installations out of found and/or
made objects. Mark Dion comes to mind as an example of an artist who takes the
museum as his medium, and combs through the collection to extract artifacts of
natural and human history, which he then recontextualizes by placing them in an
exhibition together. His installations do not educate, but open up the
possibility of new insights by making the viewer question the connections
between the disparate objects that have now been placed in juxtaposition.
The exhibitions created by Group Material in the 1980s and
early 90s are particularly interesting to me as examples of how artists can
collect, create, and curate work dealing with social or political issues. Their
exhibitions borrow the formal language of a documentary exhibition, complete
with didactics and catalogs, but are not limited to the role of educating; on
the contrary, they challenge and provoke the viewer. Borrowing the role of the
curator allows an artist to participate in the practice of creating new cultural
meaning by bringing disparate elements together in a space, and prompting the
audience to make connections between them.
Article on Group Material’s curatorial and aesthetic
practice:
“Citizen Artists: Group Material,” Alison Green, Afterall 26
(Spring 2011)
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